France and Germany, August to November 1914

French military leaders were counting
on self-confidence and verve, and they believed that the five armies they were
sending into Alsace-Lorraine
were going all the way to Berlin. Their offensive began on August 12, their
foot soldiers dressed in red pants and blue jackets, their cavalrymen
wearing bright plumed helmets and armed with sabers. They had inadequately appreciated the
new mechanistic nature of warfare. The Germans mowed them down with machine
guns. By August 23 the Germans had broken the French offensive and were
driving the French back, the French suffering in the first few weeks of the
war about 200,000 wounded and 100,000 dead – almost twice as many men as the
United States, a more populous nation, was to lose in Vietnam in eight years.

From August 12 to 23, the British were transporting their Expedition Force
-- about 26,000 men – across the channel to France, the British throwing themselves
into the fight alongside the French and joining them in retreat.

French cavalry in Paris, on their way to Germany.

The Germans were marching through Belgium, having broken through Belgium's
system of border fortresses at Liège on August 12. As the Germans marched in
columns with their rifles on their shoulders they were fired upon by Belgian
civilians. The Germans called this terrorism and a cowardly abomination, and
they retaliated by executing a few local citizens chosen at random, viewing
this as just and as a means of discouraging further assaults. It was a useless
tactic. Rather than the Belgians being cowed, the attacks upon the
Germans increased. The Germans retaliated again, killing more civilians
and burning towns. In the city of Louvain, frustrated German troops rioted,
and they destroyed much in the city, killing civilians and looting. Headlines
in Britain and the United States spoke of the Germans sacking Louvain and of
women and clergy being shot dead. There were stories
of Germans bayoneting babies and nuns and other gruesome rumors. It was a turning point
in what was already a propaganda war, with the Germans appearing to many in the
United States and Britain as brutal and bloodthirsty aggressors.

Germany crossed from Belgium into France on August 24, but the Germans did
not march to Paris as they had planned. Paris as a communications
center, as the hub of France's railways and its psychological value was not
given precedence by Germany's military commander Von Moltke. Instead he was searching out the enemy's army – the traditional
military tactic. The German offensive
swung short of Paris and southward. The German troops were exhausted after weeks
of marching. Gaps appeared in the German positions. And the regrouped French
and British forces south of Paris counterattacked in what became known as the
Battle of the Marne.

The French and the British Expeditionary
Force drove the Germans back across the Marne River. There, favorable
circumstances for the French ended. The Germans dug in. The French armies pushed against
but could not penetrate Germany's defensive positions. The Germans, in turn,
were unable to penetrate French positions or sweep around the French or British.
The generals were bewildered. At this point in European history defensive warfare
was superior. The best defense was not a good offense as they had believed.

It was obvious that the war would not be over by autumn as Germany's military
planners had anticipated. By mid-November a line of trenches and barbed wire stretched from the
English Channel, in Belgium south
to Swiss border. The Germans were more than fifty miles from Paris at its closest point. Von
Moltke was blamed for the defeat at the Marne. He had a nervous breakdown and resigned from his command.